Friday, January 21, 2011

Should they quit trying?


Mike White of the Post-Gazette wrote a piece yesterday about the fallout from the Seton-LaSalle girls basketball team’s recent 113-14 victory over the girls from Brentwood. Seton-LaSalle says it is dealing with coach Dennis Squeglia internally, but that’s not good enough for the WPIAL, which wants an official report on what action the school takes, presumably so it can go further than the action taken by the school, if it deems that necessary. The real question here is, why is Squeglia in trouble at all? Tim O'Malley, the executive director of the WPIAL, told the P-G that “sportsmanship was totally absent in this case.” The story doesn't indicate why O’Malley believes that to be the case. I'm wondering, did the Seton-LaSalle girls continue employing a full-court press against overmatched Brentwood ball-handlers, despite the score? Were they doing 360-degree dunks? Not likely. It's girls basketball, after all. Squeglia denies running it up against Brentwood and said his starters played only a couple of minutes into the second half. I don't think anybody wants a team to go out of its way to humiliate another, such as by taunting them or celebrating excessively in such a blowout. But why should the girls from Seton-LaSalle, who practice every bit as hard as the girls from Brentwood (harder, perhaps, based on the score), have to essentially stop playing as they have been taught, just so nobody's itty-bitty feelings get hurt? And it's not like this loss was an isolated thrashing. The Brentwood girls also lost 71-9 to Avonworth, 65-11 to Bishop Canevin and 64-12 to Steel Valley. My advice to the Brentwood girls, if they want to avoid another similar whipping, is to work harder and do a better job the next time. If such a beating is too much for the girls' self-esteem to bear, disband the team and just have intramural basketball.

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This in a society where coaches are constantly castigated for not "putting away" the other team. What was he supposed to do, have his team dribble in circles for three quarters? I don't get it: Are we suppose to have a killer instinct in sports or to be merciful?

January 28, 2011 at 2:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

One of the many reasons not to defeat a team by that many points, including sportsmanship, is that it can lead to trouble on the court or in the stands among frustrated players and fans. We see this all the time in pro sports. Don't steal a base when your team is up by 11 runs. Don't kick a field goal at the end of a rout in the NFL, etc.

Also, should there really be a "killer" instinct in high school sports? Just askin'.

February 2, 2011 at 11:11 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sometimes, you just can't help the scores. If you're using your bench and those players are better than the other team as well, are you supposed to tell them not to try to score?

That's not fair to those players.

Were they supposed to hold the ball and not try to score? To me, that's more embarrassing.

February 12, 2011 at 8:59 PM  

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